Peace by Chocolate with Pelle Agorelius, curator of the exhibition, at Alfred Nobel House, Björkborn (Photo Credit: Ewa Hector Agorelius)
Since fleeing Syria during the country’s civil war, living as refugees in Lebanon, coming to Canada, and rebuilding their chocolate factory, a lot has happened in the lives of the Hadhad family — some truly magnificent things.
Tareq Hadhad, who had never considered working at his father’s chocolate factory in Syria, became Peace by Chocolate’s CEO and has since received two major honours. Tareq is the 2020 National Entrepreneurship Award winner and is a Top 25 Canadian Immigrant.
Ever expanding, Peace by Chocolate has grown from a small shed placed on the corner of the Hadhad’s property to a full-blown factory. As Jon Tattrie recounts in Peace by Chocolate, on the drive home from acquiring the larger facility, Tareq told his father, “Imagine one hundred years of Peace by Chocolate. Where will we be?” (p. 178). It hasn’t been one hundred years yet, but Peace by Chocolate recently opened a new location in Halifax! Here’s a video from the store’s opening.
And there’s the news we’re sure you’ve heard about. The Hadhad story was turned into a film for the Tribeca Film Festival. You can watch an interview with one of the cast members by clicking here. They even share a short clip from the film!
But what we really wanted to tell you is that after being nominated for the Gourmand Awards in three categories, Peace by Chocolate is in an exhibition of Sustainable Gastronomy at the Alfred Nobel House in Sweden, patiently waiting for a special event taking place on World Peace Day, September 21, 2021.
The exhibition brings together a selection from the best of twenty-five years of Gourmand Awards, with over six hundred gastronomy books from fifty-five countries. Peace by Chocolate is perfectly at home amongst them. Find out more on their website at hallbars.org. And to read about how it all began, find a copy of Peace by Chocolate online at gooselane.com or at your favourite bookstore.